Westcliffe newspaper the Wet Mountain Tribune has filed a federal lawsuit against Custer County Commissioners Bill Canda and Kevin Day over violation of first amendment rights.
The lawsuit claims the two county commissioners willingly and knowingly punish the Wet Mountain Tribune for writing and publishing stories they fest were critical of the Board of Commissioners.
Every year, the board requests bids for the “newspaper of record” for Custer County. This means that the selected newspaper prints and publishes all of the legal notices that are meant to keep the public informed. The Tribune has been the lowest bidder and newspaper of record since 1883.
Canda and Day chose the higher bidder, double the Tribune bid, to be the newspaper of record. Canda stated at the time, “I cannot imagine supporting a newspaper that bad mouths how we do business. I looked up what we paid the Tribune, and while I cannot find it right here it was around $40,000. I am not going to take good money and chase it with bad.” Commissioner Day agreed with Canda saying, “It’s hard for me to imagine working with a newspaper, that for a lack of a better term, is combative.”
Commissioner Tom Flower, in response to awarding the contract to the highest bid in retaliation against the Tribune stated, “This contract if for the legal bids, and the Tribune has never refused to print something that we sent to them. This contract if about legal publishing, not editorial content.” He concluded, “It defies logic and reason to select the highest bidder that has the lowest circulation.”
The Tribune’s lawyer says in the filing, “It is firmly established that when government threatens to revoke a valuable financial benefit in retaliation for free speech, it serves to penalize them for such speech.”
